so i've seen clafoutis around the blogs for years and it always looks tasty and easy to make
so the other day i decided to give it a try with some cherries we had laying around

I found this recipe on foodnetwork.com
Cherry Clafoutis
Recipe Courtesy of Emeril Lagasse
Show: Emeril Live
Episode: French Classics

4 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 vanilla bean, split in half
1 tablespoon brandy
1 cup flour
1 1/2 cups milk
1 pound stoned cherries
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease an oval ovenproof dish about 13 inches long. In a mixing bowl, whisk the eggs and 1/2 cup of the sugar. Scrape the vanilla bean and add the pulp to the egg mixture. Stir in the brandy and flour. Whisk in the milk to form a smooth batter. In a mixing bowl, toss the cherries with the remaining sugar. Place the cherries in the ovenproof dish. Pour the batter over the cherries and place in the oven. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes or until the cake is sponge like. Remove from the oven and cool for 5 minutes before serving. Serve the clafoutis warm. Garnish with powdered sugar.

So...
I didn't have a vanilla bean, not brandy, nor a whole pound of cherries...

But I wasn't gonna let that stop me!
First, I grabbed the muffin pan and greased it

then i pitted 24 cherries and put 4 in each muffin cup
then i whipped up the batter, dividing the recipe by 4
i used a random bottle of sherry we had in the back of the bar from last Christmas' trifle extravaganza in place of the brandy, and added a bit extra just for fun

i poured the batter into the cups and set it in the oven, i was figuring about half the cooking time from the recipe (so 20 minutes)

and look how they puffed up!
they don't mention that in the recipe!
but they felt pretty sponge-like after that 20 minutes, and i threw them in for 5 more minutes just in case

i really really liked them

but then i realized that i have no basis for comparison! i have no idea what clafoutis is "supposed" to taste like!
and that happens so rarely for me! i made something i'd never eaten before!

It was like baked custard... spongy, eggy, sweet, with juicy tasty cherries
also great with ice cream on top!
even Bear enjoyed it and he's not a dessert guy!

(reheat on a plate covered with plastic wrap in the microwave for 30 seconds the next day)

Apricots, peaches and plums and all of their hybrid combos are ideal for pies, crumbles, slumps and tarts, but why not impress your guests and serve this easy-but-sophisticated French dessert instead? Clafoutis is traditionally made with cherries, but one can easily substitute another stone fruit. A baked layer of eggs, flour and sugar covers a spread of perfect summer fruit. Heaven.

As expected, I've lightened up the recipe here, so this isn't the traditional melange of ingredients. I'm sure you'll find that the taste is still fabulous and your waist will thank you as well :)

Apricot Clafoutis

7-8 ripe apricots, pitted, halved

3/4 cup sugar

3 eggs + 3/4 cup egg beaters (or 6 eggs total)

1 and 1/3 cup whole wheat pastry flour or all purpose flour

2/3 cup fat free plain yogurt (you can use low-fat, too)

1 tsp. vanilla

*******

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (170 Celsius). Cover a deep pie pan or rectangular ceramic dish with cooking spray. Line the pan or dish with the apricot halves, placing the cut part face down.

2. In a large bowl, whip together the eggs and sugar until it becomes a foamy, mousse-like mixture. I used a Cuisinart stand mixer with the whip attachment, but you could easily use a hand mixer.

3. Add the yogurt and vanilla extract and whip until well combined.

4. Add the flour into the egg/yogurt mixture a little bit at a time until it is well mixed in.

5. Pour the egg/flour mixture over the apricots in the baking dish and bake until a skewer inserted comes out clean, about 30 minutes.

Serve warm... Delicious with a little bit of whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

Il y a des jours comme ça..où la tête est prête à imploser (oui oui beaucoup moins de nettoyage contrairement à l'explosion...)et où il faut quand même pointer sa présence auprès du balai et de la cuisinière...des jours où comme par hasard,il faut aller faire les courses,et tout autre activité ludique...des jours où quand arrive le soir,on a qu'une envie : se caler le ventre avec un bon plat de pâtes fraîches,parce que la salade de midi,elle était bien mignonne,mais elle n' a pas rempli franchement l'estomac...

j'ai donc opté pour un duo gagnant : épinards/poisson fumé..;

On connaît le mariage traditionnel avec le saumon fumé,mais le hareng moins,voire pas du tout!

De mes origines slaves,je garde le goût pour les aliments fumés en général...Dans mon enfance,j'aurais tué pour un bout de "kaçenka" charcuterie polonaise fumée qui surpasse de loin (........le chauvinisme n'est pas réservé aux "français"...)toutes les autres charcuteries.Bref...et au menu chez ma maman,elle combinait souvent pomme de terre et hareng fumé.Féculent pour féculent,j'ai troqué les patates pour les pâtes :

-500gr de tagliatelles fraîches

-2filets de hareng fumé

-épinards frais, lavés et équeuttés (quantité selon les goûts)

-3grosses cuillères à soupe de fromage blanc

-2cuillères à soupe de parmesan

-safran,ail,poivre.

Faire réduire les épinards dans un peu de beurre et une gousse d'ail hachée.Quand ils ont rendu toute leur eau,la vider,ajouter le hareng coupé en petits dés,le fromage blanc,le safran et le parmesan...laisser épaissir la sauce...

Fautes chauffer un grand volume d'eau salée et immerger les pâtes trois minutes.Dresser sur un plat et nappez de sauce.

Et pour le dessert alors?

Clafoutis made in "me" :

-1 boîte de lait concentré sucré

-2oeufs

-3cuillères à soupe de farine

-1 trait de vanille liquide

-1cuillère à soupe de miel

-250gr de physalis(ou cerise de terre,ou cage d'amour)

-1 mangue

Effeuiller les physalis et les couper en 2.Gardez en pour la déco.Faire subir le même sort à la mangue.Déposer les fruits au fond d'un plat beurré et nappez les d'une cuillère miel d'acacia.

Mettez le lait concentré sucré dans une jatte.Fouettez avec deux oeufs et trois cuillères à soupe de farine.Ajouter un trait de vaille liquide et disposer par dessus les fruits.

Enfournez pendant 30 minutes à 180°.

Mission accomplie,un aspégic et au lit!!!!

Clafoutis. CLAW-FOO-TEE. Go ahead, say it again. And again. And then make up some completely senseless rhymes with it, like, Booty Clafoutis. Or, Clafoutis in Djibouti. Or my kids' favorites, Clafoutis makes you go pooty. Whatever that means.

But clafoutis is a classic French dessert, and an easy one at that. My parents are in town for a few days, and I wanted to make a quick and simple dessert for them. I had a bag of frozen sour cherries available along with some fig preserves. So I made two desserts, a standard cherry clafoutis and a really great fig version. A double header of clafoutis action, if you will!

If you've never heard of clafoutis, it's a cross between a custard and a dutch baby pancake. It's loaded with eggs, but it has enough flour in it to give it a slightly more airy feel. The classic version is made with cherries, but I've used lots of different fruits. I eat clafoutis for dessert or for breakfast. When warm, it's light and fluffy. After it cools, it gets much more custardy, but either way, it's delicious.

Some people say that if it's not made with cherries, it's not a clafoutis -- it's a flognarde. Because I like to say "clafoutis" more than I like to say "flognarde," you bet your booty I'll call it clafoutis.

I'm giving you my recipe for a Southern Style clafoutis made with whole fig preserves. We're blessed with friends who give us lots of jars of these sweet delicacies, and they're really perfect with this dish. If you use fresh figs -- and summer's not too far away -- you'll want to cut them in half and dip them in honey and cinnamon sugar first! Yum.

Fig Preserve Clafoutis

• 4 Tbsp. butter, melted
• 6 eggs
• 10-12 whole figs from fig preserves
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup milk
• 2/3 cup all purpose flour
• pinch of salt

Preheat oven to 400°F. Butter and sugar a deep dish pie pan. Cut the figs in half and arrange in pie pan. Combine eggs, sugar and vanilla in a bowl and beat with an electric mixer until frothy (you can also use a blender!). Slowly add the milk, flour, melted butter and salt. Blend thoroughly. Pour over the figs, and bake until batter is golden brown and is fairly firm in the center. The batter will raise, but will fall shortly after you remove it from the oven. Serve warm or at room temperature, sprinkled with confectioners sugar.

 The savory clafoutis wasn't bad, it just wasn't recipe repertoire worthy. Part of my journey in discovering cooking is to build up consistently good recipes - recipes I'd be happy to pass on to my children.

 I adjusted the recipe a bit, using zucchini, yellow squash, mushrooms, and leeks. I swapped out the cumin and coriander for sage and thyme. As Cauli said, it wasn't bad. In fact, I had third slice. It just wasn't perfect I guess. The issue seemed to be in the consistency of the clafoutis itself. It was a bit flat. I think it could have used more eggs and flour to be a bit fluffier.

You'll also see, sitting demurely on the plate in the back ground, a tomato, chickpea, and red onion salad. I found this wonderful recipe on Elise's wonderful site, Simply Recipes (I've found her recipes to be very sturdy and consistently good). I halved the recipe and omitted the hard boiled eggs (as the clafoutis was egg enough). I also added a bit of crushed, dried thyme to the dressing. The salad is hearty, and with the eggs, I imagine it could be eaten as a main dish.

I was pleased with the dressing as well - probably because it was the first time I've made dressing. Ever. It's so easy! Who knew? (Okay lot's of people, but still exciting nonetheless.)

*Update: So the clafoutis is pretty good the next day. "Pretty good" in that "I'd never serve this to anyone else but I can't stuff my mouth fast enought of savory clafoutis goodness."

The couple branches that extend over to our patio only grant me access to a tiny selection of the fruit. And the birds, far more nimble and acrobatic than I, get to most of them before I do. Check out this crazy picture, they carefully eat the fruit from the pit while it's still hanging on the tree, leaving remains that make it look like a cherry-pit tree! I was able to nab one single cherry this weekend that the birds had somehow missed, in perfect ripe form. The color of both the skin and the flesh is of a royal purple so deep as to be nearly black. It just explodes with juiciness and powerful cherry flavor. But I can see this never being a good commercial fruit, definitely tender and surely quite delicate once plucked from the tree. I split it in half to share with my sister. My single annual dose of a mystery heritage cherry until about this time next year.

Thankfully, there are other cherries to be had this time of year. Though it has been a particularly hard season for Washington cherry growers. Due in large part to the exceptionally cold spring, harvest is running at about half its normal levels throughout the Northwest. Which also means prices are a bit higher, but I'm willing to pay a little more to still get my summertime fill and to support the local farmers.

While eating great cherries as they are--heck, it's good enough for all those birds!--is wonderful, there are a few recipes I love to pull out come cherry season. A particular favorite is clafoutis, a rustic French dessert that really couldn't be easier. I included a clafoutis recipe in my Northwest Homegrown cookbook Stone Fruit, there using fresh plums instead. Cherries are traditional, however, the recipe I use based on that from a very dear friend, Anne-Marie, from France. I'll surely revisit Anne-Marie in posts to come, she helped orchestrate the study abroad program I did in Dijon a couple decades back. Then, and in years since when I've spent time visiting with her and her family, Anne-Marie has provided some of the most memorable dining experiences of my life. That's "dining" in a totally unaffected,

straightforward, start-with-the-best-ingredients-and-don't-mess-them-up fashion. It proved a wonderful counterpoint to my more formal training at La Varenne.

So, back to the clafoutis. Rub softened butter over the bottom and sides of a gratin dish or similar shallow baking dish. Pit enough cherries to loosely cover the bottom (classically, pits are left in the cherries but I prefer pre-pitted); plums, apricots and ripe pears are other fruits I'd recommend, pitted/cored and cut into appropriate pieces. I think peaches would likely be too sweet for this recipe.

In a medium bowl, combine 1/2 cup sugar with 1/2 cup all-purpose flour

and a pinch of salt. Whisk to mix. In another bowl, whisk together 3 eggs, then add 1 1/4 cups milk and 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract and whisk to blend. Add the egg mixture to the dry mixture and gently stir with the whisk just until smooth. The result will look something like a thin pancake batter. Pour the batter into the gratin dish. Put the dish in a 425 degree F oven, immediately turning the temp down to 375 degrees. Bake until set and lightly browned around the edges, 30 to 40 minutes. In the book, I recommend dotting with butter at 30 minutes, sprinkling with 1 tablespoon of sugar and returning to the oven to create a sugary crust. But honestly, I prefer it unadorned.

The clafoutis will puff up as it bakes, then settle again as it cools. Don't worry, that's the intention! Not a dessert to eat hot, I prefer it at room temperature. This made for a perfect dessert last night on the patio, after a dinner of salade niçoise with grilled salmon and grilled tuna. Oh, and a bottle of Chinookwinery's cabernet franc rosé wine. No more ideal summertime supper than that! Well, maybe tonight's grilled burgers will be a contender. I'm fickle that way.

Pour 4 personnes (prep. 15min; cuis. 17min)

-200 grs de cerises

-4 oeufs

-130 grs de sucre

-110 grs de farine

- 70 grs de beurre

-4 cuillère à soupe d'eau

-4 cuillère à soupe de kirch (ou liqueur de cerises)

-1/2 sachet de levure chimique

1) Préchauffer le four à 180°C (th.6).

2) Rincer les cerises et les dénoyauter à l'aide d'un couteau.

3) Faire fondre le beurre au micro-ondes.

2) Mettre le farine dans un saladier avec les oeufs légèrement battus au centre. Petit à petit, avec un fouet, tournez en ramenant la farine vers le centre pour éviter les grumeaux.

3) Ajouter le sucre,le beurre fondu, la levure, l'eau et le kirch et fouettez énergiquement. Plus vous fouettez, plus le clafoutis sera léger.

4) Beurrer et fariner des moules individuels et y verser la pâte. Déposer quelques cerises dans chaque moule. (Si besoin compléter avec un peu de pâte, mais arrêtez vous avant le bord).

5) Faire cuire 17 minutes à 180° C (th.6).

6) Servez le clafouti démoulé et tiède dans une petite assiette. Vous pouvez décorer avec des bouts de cerises et du coulis.

Ce clafoutis peut être réalisé avec d'autres fruits comme par exemple des pommes. Vous pouvez alors remplacer le kirch par du calvados.

That's a lot of links for one paragraph!  Still here?  So apricots in clafoutis are almost a given, but what is the best way to incorporate the ginger?  I decided that adding fresh grated ginger to the batter would give the most vibrant ginger flavor. 

In order to enhance the flavor of the butter I went ahead and browned it.  Because who doesn't love the nutty richness of brown butter?

I also roasted the flour before incorporating it into the batter, adding to the fullness of flavor imparted by the brown butter.  I first read about this technique on Chocolate and Zucchini a couple of months ago, and have been intrigued ever since.  (Note: I did attempt the Squeeze Cookies, and they were tasty but ugly, which is why you never saw them here.)  The batter made, I set about arranging the apricots in an attractive manner in the baking dish.  They were not exactly ideal specimens, a little worse for wear after the manhandling they received at the hands of the guy selling them.  But I did my best to make them look cute for the camera.

And when it was baked and cooled, I dished it up with a scoop of brown butter ice cream on top.  (I first made the brown butter ice cream a couple of Thanksgivings ago.  I served it with a rustic apple pie.  It was good then, and it was good now, accompanied by the sweet apricots and tangy ginger in the clafoutis.)

The ginger did seriously excellent things to the apricots, intensifying their flavor while giving a little kick of its own as well.  And it was a welcome foil to the richness of all that brown butter.  I'm smiling just thinking about it.

I have taken the liberty of typing up the recipes, in case you need a little weekend project.

Apricot-Ginger Clafoutis

80 g/2 ½ oz. all-purpose flour, roasted (see note)

60 g/2 oz. almond meal

50 g/1 ¾ oz. granulated sugar

50 g/1 ¾ oz. raw sugar (e.g. turbinado, cassonade)

Pinch sea salt

3 eggs

185 ml/6 oz. milk

1-2 Tbsp. rum

50 g/1 ¾ oz. butter, browned

1 Tbsp. grated fresh ginger

500 g/1 lb. 1 oz. apricots, pitted and quartered

1. Combine the flour, almond meal, sugars, and salt in a medium bowl.
2. In another bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, rum, browned butter, and ginger and pour into dry ingredients.  Whisk to combine.  The mixture should be about the consistency of thin pancake batter.  Set aside to rest at least 30 minutes, preferably an hour.
3. Preheat the oven to 160C/325F.  Butter an 8”x8” (or equivalent) glass or ceramic baking dish.  Arrange the apricots in the dish.
4. Pour the batter over the apricots and place in the oven.  Bake 50-60 minutes, until the edges have puffed a bit and the center is mostly firm.  Remove from oven and cool to room temperature.  Serve with whipped cream or ice cream.

Serves 6-8

Note: To roast the flour, spread it in an even layer on a baking sheet and roast at 175C/350F for about 15 minutes, stirring once or twice during this time.  The flour will take on a hint of color, and will have a nutty, roasted aroma.  This step isn’t completely necessary, but the resulting clafoutis will have a deeper flavor and a more yielding texture than one made with raw flour.

* * * * *

Brown Butter Ice Cream

4 oz. butter

½ vanilla bean, split and scraped

2 ½ cups whole milk

1 cup heavy cream

½ cup brown sugar

6 egg yolks

¼ cup granulated sugar

Pinch salt

1. Place the butter into a small saucepan with the vanilla bean.  Heat over medium heat until the solids in the butter begin to brown and the liquid darkens slightly in color.  Remove from heat.
2. In a medium saucepan, bring the cream, milk, and brown sugar to a simmer over medium heat.
3. Meanwhile, whisk together the yolks, granulated sugar, and salt.  When the milk mixture simmers, pour a little into the yolks and whisk to combine.  Return this mixture to the saucepan and reduce the heat to low.  Cook, stirring constantly with a heatproof rubber spatula, until the custard thickens and reaches a temperature of 175-185 F.  Stir in the browned butter.
4. Remove the pan from the heat and strain the custard into a bowl or plastic container.  Chill completely.
5. Freeze in an ice cream maker, following the directions for your particular machine.

Makes a generous quart.

You may be wondering what I did with the rest of the cherries after only using a quarter pound in last week's stone fruit tart.  Well, obviously some went to the noble cause of snacking (fruits are free snacks, as Nick is prone to saying).  But when I noticed that they were starting to go South I decided to make a cherry clafoutis.  This classic French dessert is often described as a thick, eggy pancake, but I've always considered it more of a custard.  The beauty of it, though, is in the simplicity.

A batter of eggs, milk, sugar, flour, and almond meal is poured over fruit and baked.  Traditionally, the cherries aren't even pitted, but seeing as I don't care to break my teeth on my dessert, I chose to pit the cherries for my clafoutis, despite the fact that I don't own a cherry pitter.  Let me tell you, halving and pitting 400 grams of cherries by hand is a messy undertaking.

But that was the hardest part.

The cherries went into a buttered baking dish, and I poured the batter on top.  Into the oven with it, and 40 minutes later I have a beautiful seasonal dessert.

Of course, there is the requisite waiting for it to cool so it won't melt the whipped cream right away.  I know that clafoutis is usually garnished with powdered sugar as well, but it seems unnecessary, in my opinion.  I prefer to let the mingling flavors of cherries and almonds do the seducing on their own.  No extra sweetness required.  Nick actually used the word "wonderful" upon finishing his portion, so I must be doing something right.

I served this one with another Belgian lambic, this time a Kriek, or (you guessed it) cherry beer.

It was good complement to the dessert, but on its own, this particular beer suffers from a bit of cough-syrupiness.  I know there are better Krieks out there.  Fortunately, the dessert upstaged even the gorgeous ruby red color of the lambic, and emerged as the undisputed star of the show.

Unlike other bloggers, I have no Amazing Cooking Mother. My dad does all the cooking. I realize now, however, that I think I ate the same 5-10 meals throughout my childhood. And I love them. They involve salmon patties, homemade macaroni and cheese, tuna melts, burgers, some dish involving noodles from a package and a protein, in my high school years we got really creative with store bought pizza crusts (ie. take whatever is in the fridge/left over and put it on the pizza with some cheese). My dad and I are totally happy living off of sandwiches. All that is relevant to now is that when I went to bake this morning we had no vanilla! I feel like vanilla extract is one of those things you just keep accumulating and you have 3-4 half bottles of vanilla in the cupboard. I actually had to go to a NEIGHBOR and borrow some.

What did I make? Well, I made the elusive clafoutis. I don't believe I've ever heard this word pronounced aloud before. I did my research and found "kla-foo-tee" to be correct pronunciation (can someone confirm this?). I haven't actually eaten clafoutis before, but all the pictures looked good and what combination of flour, sugar, eggs, butter, milk, and fruit could really be bad?

I made Blackberry and Mango Clafoutis.

After taking this picture I ate about half this piece then remembered the recipe's suggestion to sprinkle some pistacio on top, so I added some and it was definitely a good choice. It added a great texture.

Anyway, even though we were out of vanilla it was great to be home where we at least have REAL MIXING BOWLS. And knives that work. And a dad to send to the store to buy blackberries.

I spent some time today learning how to control the white balance on my little Nikon Coolpix. I also spent some time learning how to cut mangoes. My boyfriend is the ultimate mango slicer so he usually does it when we're at school. On my own, however, with much riper mangoes than I'm used to, it proved a little difficult. You know what? I took a picture of my mango dissection failure...I'm not even going to put it up. It's too embarrassing.

place fruit on your buttered dish

See, my kitchen here is unfortunately very dark. In fact, this whole house has serious natural light issues. It's a rental house. Because of this, I was very tempted to use my flash. Especially after I found a white balance for flash setting. But the blackberries, dark as they were, seemed to throw this off. Not to mention the counter top is a dark granite. It was very frustrating. Then, I still have not gotten Adobe Photoshop Elements for my Mac. I used to have it on my old PC. I was SO photoshop savvy way back when in my super duper scrapbooking days.

I so love the contrast in this fruit. Although I complicated my photography, I found the clafoutis quite simple to make! Whisk some stuff together and pour it over fruit.

For some reason I was having some focusing problems with my camera which was a little weird. My favorite thing about this dish? The way the blackberries floated to the surface of the batter, and appear as these little purple clusters of dots just below the surface. My daddy messed up my picture of my whole clafoutis because he picked a couple of those very same blackberries off of the top! I guess I can't blame him.

I borrowed the recipe from Mandy's blog: Fresh from the Oven.

So how was my very first taste of clafoutis? Great! Actually, no, it was better once I put the pistachios on. I think it's a little too eggy of a dish for me. But that MIGHT be because I had a fried egg for breakfast, and quiche for lunch, and then a second slice of this! Oops. In fact I still haven't had dinner.

On that note, I think I'll make myself a sandwich and get back to watching my current tv show obsession: The Wire. This is because, unfortunately, the second season of The Tudors is airing now and I don't get showtime. Also, I'm not willing to hunt it down online because one of the best parts of the show is ogling the detail put into costuming and set. (But for a fabulous endorsement of why you should watch The Wire, skip on over to one of my professors' blog, Just TV, and poke around.)

A couple of years ago Henry bought me a raspberry clafoutis from this little bakery in Greenpoint. He was over at his friend Fernando's apartment watching "Project Gayway" and he'd left the clafoutis next to my laptop with a note that said, "Here's a raspberry clafoutis for my little Strawberry Clafoutis." (Strawberry Clafoutis was one of his nicknames for me—a year later he would endearingly call me Sour Cherry Strudel, two months later I was Blueberry Flognarde, and then until the end I was always Danish Remoulade with Capers.)

I was touched by Henry's thoughtfulness and I smiled as I ripped into the raspberry clafoutis. But it was dry and tasted oddly like kielbasa—nothing like the clafoutis from Balthazar. How could I tell Henry that his gesture, while sweet, left a bad taste in my mouth? I decided to call Ruth, who advised me to tell Henry that I loved the clafoutis. So when Henry came home, that's exactly what I did: I said, "Henry, it was a wonderful clafoutis." Henry smiled and said, "I'm glad you liked it—mine tasted a little bit like kielbasa."

After Henry fell asleep that night I crept over to my computer and posted on Emily Magazine. I cried as I wrote about the clafoutis, and how I'd lied to Henry about liking it, and how being dishonest could ruin a relationship. In the morning I knew he'd read it along with hundreds of other people. But I didn't care. My relationship with Henry was important but not as important as letting people know about it.

Le Temps des Cerises !

C'est le temps des cerises, mais surtout des clafoutis...

ch'tite recette à dévorer :

- 600 g de cerises non dénoyautées,
- 120 g de farine tamisée,
- 60 cl de lait,
- 25 g de beurre mou,
- 3 oeufs,
- 100 g de sucre,
- 1 sachet de sucre vanillé,
- 1 pincée de sel

(un peu de rhum)

* Laver les cerises, les équeuter et les dénoyauter.
Les mettre dans un saladier, les saupoudrer avec 20 g de sucre et les laisser macérer au frigo le temps de faire le reste.

* Faire fondre le beurre un peu, laisser refroidir.

* Dans une terrine, mélanger la farine, avec le sel, le sucre et le sucre vanillé. Ajouter les oeufs un à un puis incorporer le beurre tiédi et le lait progressivement. Parfumer avec le rhum (très peu) et travailler la pâte pour qu'elle soit bien lisse et sans grumeaux.

* Préchauffer le four sur th.7 (210°C).

* Beurrer un plat à tarte, y répartir les cerises et verser la pâte dessus. Enfourner et laisser cuire 35 à 40 min. (si c'est un minifour, il faut laisser un peu plus)

* Dès que le clafoutis est cuit (une lame de couteau enfoncée au centre doit en ressortir sèche), le sortir du four et le poudrer avec le reste de sucre.

pour dénoyauter les cerisies, j'ai trouvé cette super méthode, très pratique !

www.recettes.qc.ca/coupsdepouce/lecdp.php?id=497

Clafoutis is farmhouse dessert, with the kind of simple, homey goodness that country cooks have perfected out of the need to find easy-fix and tasty uses for an abundance of ripe, luscious summer fruits. Clafoutis is not one of those intimidating ( but scrumptious ! ) configurations one admires in the jewel-box windows up-scale French pastry shops - it's comfort food.

Clafoutis can be made using fresh fruits or canned fruit, but my personal favorite is made with cherries. I have experimented with jarred and fresh cherries and like the results of both. But of course, jarred cherries allows one to have fruit on hand for whenever the urge for quick and easy to bake clafoutis strikes.

So, I was particularly intrigued when I recently spied jars of plump, whole cherries in light syrup packed and grown by the Red Hills Fruit Company in Oregon on a grocers shelf when I was traveling. The bountiful Pacific Northest is home to many fruit orchards, and juicy, tasty cherries rank among the most sought after. We often get requests from our customers for interesting varieties of jarred cherries ( for baking, sauce-making, fillings, quick chutneys or sweet spoon fruits, etc )  so I purchased a jar and dusted off my treasured clafoutis recipe. I purchased black cherries and used the entire 12 ounce jar of fruits ( drained ) in the recipe. We loved the cherries and loved the results, so I quickly placed an order for our store for the Black Cherries in Light Syrup and the Royal Ann ( Ranier ) Cherries in Light Syrup.    

My tried and true clafoutis recipe comes from one of my favorite cookbooks, written by, in my opinion, one of the best food chroniclers of our time, Susan Herrmann Loomis. Susan is a colleague who has the good fortune to live in Normandy, France, and this book is her French Farmhouse Cookbook. My copy is testifiably dog earred and flagged with many post-it-notes, and just reading thru her headnotes for each recipe reminds me of how much Bob and I love France and treasure the memories we have of our many trips there.

This is Susan's recipe, courtesy of her publisher, Workman Publishing in New York. Of all the clafoutis recipes that I have tried, I like this one because Susan is very good at crafting recipes, so if you follow her instructions, you will get great results. This clafoutis is eggy and custardy but firm - when it cools you can cut it and serve it in slices (I am not a fan of clafoutis recipes that yield pudding-like results.) It also gets nice and puffy and browned around the edges which gives it a great appearance.

Clafoutis by Susan Herrman Loomis                                              Serves 6-8

12 ounces fresh or jarred fruits, drained of syrup if necessary

1 cup minus 2 tablespoons sifted, unbleached all-purpose flour

Heaping 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt

2 cups milk

3 large eggs

1/3 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 tablespoon unsalted butter, cut into 6 pieces

Preheat the oven to 450°F. Butter a 9 1/2-inch pan ( I use a 10 inch round cake layer pan) round tart pan or baking dish.

Place the fruits in the pan and spread around evenly.

Combine the flour and salt in a large bowl and mix with your hands. Whisk in 1 cup of the milk until smooth. Then add the eggs one by one, whisking briefly after each addition. Whisk in the sugar, the remaining 1 cup milk, and the vanilla extract.

Carefully pour the batter over the fruit, and adjust the spacing of the fruits if necessary. Drop small bits of the butter over the top of the mixture and place the pan on the center rack of the over. Bake until it is golden and puffed, and no longer liquidy, about 25 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and let it cool thoroughly before serving.